I try my best to do some sort of recap/superlative list at the end of every year and while I won’t bore you with a month-by-month list of 2015 highlights — I’m saving that torturous activity for Joey 🙂 — I thought I’d dole out a list of the best tastes!  Just know that this is a post where I act like everything was the best thing I ever ate.

Best Food Lover’s Cleanse Meal: Roast Chicken with Butternut-Tahini Purée

This is where it all began with roasting a whole chicken and that butternut-tahini puree is life changing.  I would (and did…) eat it by the spoonful.

Best Family Recipe Meal: My Uncle’s Red Beans and Rice

We made this for Mardi Gras and it was our best batch yet!  Need to restock on pickled pork so we can make more this winter.

Best Vegan Meal: TIE between the Roasted Veggie Bowl and Garlic Mac N Cheese

I’m not ready to disclose how many times I made both of these meals this year…

Best Restaurant Cocktail: Root Down’s Pepper Blossom

It’s not even on the happy hour menu but it’s so worth paying full price for.

Best Homemade Drink: Blood Orange Margarita

Partly because we started making these right around the beginning of spring, when you can feel warm weather right around the corner, but mostly because margaritas are delicious.

Best Breakfast Burrito: Onefold

If you know me at all, you know I do not take breakfast lightly.  2015 was the year of the breakfast burrito for me, so I ate a lot of them, but the one at Onefold is FAR AND AWAY my favorite.

Best Happy Hour: Humboldt :: Farm Fish Wine

Public high-five mid-meal worthy.  From the drinks to the dips and ESPECIALLY that burger, Joey and I were BLOWN AWAY.  Up until that moment I had had trouble thinking of the best burger I’d ever eaten, but this is without a doubt IT.

Best Iced Drink: Vietnamese Iced Coffee at Onefold

Again with Onefold, I know.  I just really really like what that place is selling, I guess!  This Vietnamese iced coffee tastes like drinking melted ice cream with the added bonus of a serious caffeine buzz.  Fact: It’s impossible to drink without having your eyes light up.

Best Peanut Butter: Better Off Spread’s Every Rosemary Has Its Thorn (aka chocolate rosemary lemon peanut butter)

It sounds crazy, but I have never had a more unique or delicious jar of peanut butter.  I mourned the end of this jar for months, until Joey got me a jar for Christmas and now he wins the Best Husband Ever award.

Best Lunch: Mercantile Dining and Provision

I had been dying to try this Union Station restaurant but their dinner menu is $$$ so I “settled” for lunch and turns out I wasn’t settling at all.  There’s granola, goat cheese and polenta croutons on my salad and I literally could not keep my hands off Joey’s braised short rib sandwich.  It was all incredible!

Best Latte: Lavender Latte at The Weathervane Café

Don’t even get me started on how much I love this adorable little husband & wife-owned and operated coffee shop.  It’s so quirky and weird and… grandma-esque, in the best way possible.  So of course they have a lavender latte and of course, my lavender-loving heart cried tears of joy upon tasting it.  Fickle lavender consumers need not apply, this is only for us real enthusiasts.

Best Toast: Cornbread Toast at The Mill

WHAT. EVER. with your avocado toast.  I’m not even about that.  But I am SO about almond butter toast and I am EVEN MORE about cornbread toast with butter and honey.  Because please tell me how often you come across such a thing.  And if the coffee shop you’re getting it at bakes that bread up fresh themselves, cuts it extra thick and adds the toppings so generously.

Best Donut: Pip’s Original

Please know that this was not an easy decision.  We ate A LOT of really good donuts on our vacation (and even made some really good ones at home!) but come on, you just can’t compete with the cuteness that are mini donuts.  Plus Pip’s knows how to keep it classic and simple with a cinnamon sugar donut that has the perfect taste and texture.

Best Vacation Dinner: Fried Chicken Rice Bowl at Boke Bowl

Remember how I couldn’t sleep the night before because I was too excited to be (and eat) in Portland??  It had a lot to do with this rice bowl.  It wasn’t fancy or expensive, it was just an incredible combination of all these delicious things that somehow went together so well.

Best Vacation Breakfast: Steak and Cheddar Eggs at Tasty N Alder

Just whoa.  I’m so picky about scrambled eggs — but only because we all have our own opinions on how they should be cooked and what they should taste like and I just happen to think my opinion is the right one — and steak cooking level and I just had zero criticism for this dish.

Best Coffee: Heart Coffee Roasters

Joey bought me a brand new bag of beans for Christmas and I am one happy girl.

Best Home-Cooked Meal: ANOTHER TIE between Sunny’s Roasted Rosemary and Thyme Chicken, Carrots & Potatoes and Fettuccine Alfredo

Best Coffee Shop Breakfast: Chicken and Biscuits at Black Eye Capitol Hill

I can’t get over this place and how good they are at everything from coffee to cocktails to décor to food.  It’s incredible!

Best Noodle Bowl: Spicy Chicken Ramen at Uncle

THE END ALL BE ALL OF DELICIOUS NOODLE THINGS.

What was the best thing you ate in 2015?